


You Stayed

by wheel_pen



Series: Alice [12]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Naughtiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark rushes away to save someone. Alice does something unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Stayed

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Alice, my original female character, is new in Smallville. There is something special about her, and she and Clark form a relationship.
> 
> 2\. This series starts after the end of the second season—after the destruction of the spaceship and Clark abruptly leaving town.
> 
> 3\. Underage warning: This story may contain human or human-like teenagers, in high school, in sexual situations.
> 
> 4\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

_Homecoming Dance, junior year, October_

It was ridiculous to go back to the gym now, but Clark always did—he always went back to the gym or the coffee shop or wherever it was he had left someone waiting, mysteriously, while he ran off to do things he couldn’t tell them about. He didn’t know what he expected to find when he went back, but he felt like he couldn’t go home until he had at least completed the circuit—some alien form of closure, perhaps.

So he was standing in the hallway of the high school at one in the morning, staring at the doors to the gym, knowing that it was stupid but unable to leave just yet. With a sigh Clark pushed open one of the creaky doors and stepped into the dim room, surveying the as-yet untouched damage from the Homecoming Dance. Gold and brown crepe streamers hung limply from the ceiling, puffy paper pumpkins and gourds were toppled over on the white plastic sheets covering the long tables, a large bowl of lime green sherbet punch was settling out into its constituent parts. The clean-up committee had gone off to celebrate, he supposed, and would drag themselves back in the next day, groaning and complaining, to sweep up the endless cookie crumbs and mop the punch-sticky floor. Until then, the place was left only to the mice—

“Clark?” The voice echoed in the cavernous gymnasium.

He turned, surprised, to the row of chairs along the wall under the faint leftovers of mood lighting—and there was Alice, putting down a copy of the _Torch_. And smiling at him.

He didn’t know what to do. He just stared at her. She started to frown and stood up. “Are you alright?” she asked with concern, hurrying over to him.

Clark caught her in his arms, the lace of her white dress rough against his hands.  A slow grin spread across his face as he looked down at her. She had stayed.

“Clark?” Alice repeated worriedly, examining his mussed hair, torn shirt, dirt-smudged face. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”

“I’m sorry I had to go so quickly,” he told her, wondering how she was going to respond. “But I had to… What Chloe said about Blake was true, it must have been some kind of meteor effect.” He swallowed hard, ignoring the guilt that pushed itself into his stomach. “I thought maybe I could help.”

“Where’s Blake now?” Alice asked in concern.

“Oh, they’ve got him, the police I mean,” Clark assured her. His fingers itched over her ribs, as if they couldn’t quite believe she was real. “He’ll probably be under lock and key for a while. That’s what usually happens.” There had to be an entire wing of the Metropolis Psychiatric Institute devoted to people driven to homicidal mania by the meteor rocks. Clark took a breath, although technically he didn’t need any. This was the part where he often lost anyone who’d stuck with him until now. “He had Lana.”

“Is she okay?” Alice sounded genuinely… worried.

“Yeah, she’s a little shaken up,” Clark admitted, “but she’s home with Chloe now, and she’ll be okay.”

Alice smiled. “Good. Are _you_ okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she told him with a little smirk, “because you owe me a dance. Come here.” She slid her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, encouraging him to sway back and forth.

Clark’s arms relaxed around her waist and he smiled. “There’s no music,” he pointed out.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I wasn’t very fond of the DJ’s selections anyway,” Alice told him. “Besides, with slow dances, the song really doesn’t matter. Unless you’re ambitious and you learn to waltz or something.” She rested her dark head on his shoulder, and Clark momentarily gave thanks to the inventor of three-inch heels.

“What song are we dancing to?” Clark asked after a quiet moment. “Just for reference.” Just to hear the sound of her voice.

“Um…” Alice thought for a bit. “’Unwell’ by Matchbox Twenty.”

Clark smirked against her hair. “Is that a slow song?”

“It’s ambiguous,” she replied defensively. “Besides, I like it.” She paused. “Okay. ‘When I Look to the Sky’ by Train.”

“As long as it isn’t that creepy ‘Invisible’ song by Clay Aiken,” Clark sighed.

Alice smacked his shoulder, and Clark decided he must have been more tired than he thought because he _felt_ it more than usual. “D----t, Clark!” she chided him. “Now you’ve got that stuck in my head.” She put her head back against his shoulder, pouting a little bit.

A pout like that should be illegal, he thought. Most pouts should in fact be illegal, just to prevent anyone over the age of seven from considering them a valid way to express emotion. But this kind of pout should be illegal too, for his own safety, because it was the kind accompanied by a tug on his collar to pull his lips down to hers, the kind that suggested that he could make up for his grave transgression in ways that would please them both—the kind that made him want to stand in that gym for the next millennium or so without taking a single step away from the reach of her arms.

He _was_ tired, bone tired, Clark told himself. He could have sworn he didn’t let Alice up for air enough, that he held her a little too tightly, that he nibbled a little too hard, but she wasn’t gasping for breath or pulling away bruised, so surely his perception must be off.

“I’ll take you home,” Clark suggested, staring down into those sapphire-blue eyes. Of course Clark had never seen a real sapphire--maybe Lex had one lying around somewhere that he could look at? _Hey, Lex, got any sapphires? I want to see if they’re really the color of Alice’s eyes._ Ooh boy, definitely time for some sleep…

“Okay,” she replied, curling up against him. “But wait until the song is over.”

They kept swaying. “Thanks,” Clark finally said, although it seemed woefully inadequate.

“For what?”

“For staying,” he told her, feeling awkward. “People usually don’t… stay.”

“Oh.” She sounded mildly surprised. “Well, next time I’ll come with you.”

Clark laughed a bit at that, a little giddy. “No, I mean, people usually go home. Or out with someone else.”

“Huh.” Alice yawned. “We’ll see how it goes.” A cryptic response that his brain decided to file away for later processing. She pulled back and smiled up at him sleepily. “I guess you better take me home then. My mom’s probably waiting up.”

“In that case I’m going to let you off a block away,” Clark decided, leading her towards the exit. “Because your mom probably keeps a handgun by the door for just such occasions.”

“Oh, trust me,” Alice assured him, in a long-suffering tone, “if anyone gets into trouble it will be _me_. You’ll be the innocent, apple-cheeked lad I led into temptation.”

Clark grinned, holding open the main door to the school for her. “That’ll be a nice change of pace,” he said.

 

“You _stayed_?” Chloe looked aghast. Alice glanced up from her algebra book. She’d _known_ it was a bad idea to take her fifteen-minute break at Chloe’s table at the Talon. “You’re not supposed to _stay_!”

Alice shrugged and shook her head helplessly. “Look, I don’t understand what the big deal is,” she replied a little impatiently. She had a test to study for. As a matter of fact, so did Chloe.

“You just—you can’t _stay_ ,” Chloe repeated unhelpfully, as if it were too obvious for explanation. “I mean, this is Clark Kent we’re talking about. The poster child for mysterious disappearances.”

“Chloe, Blake was on a rampage,” Alice reminded the blond. “And he was holding Lana hostage—Lana who is your _friend_ and _roommate_ ,” she added pointedly.

“And… what?” Chloe asked rhetorically. “Clark used his Farmboy Charm to convince Blake to let her go?”

“Well I don’t know, Chloe,” Alice told her with exasperation. “I didn’t ask. Didn’t you ask Lana what happened? I thought the _Torch_ would get an exclusive.”

“She doesn’t remember anything,” Chloe replied, disappointment evident. “She was out cold. When she came to the paramedics were there and it was all over.”

“Too bad,” Alice said sarcastically and went back to her studying.

The blond was quiet for less than a minute. “But seriously, Alice, when Clark runs out on you, you can’t just stick around waiting for him to come back.”

“Why not, Chloe?” Alice’s patience was wearing thin. If she did badly on this test her mom was going to find a way to blame it on Clark and suggest she shouldn’t see him so much.

“Because—because _nobody_ does that.” Alice raised a dark eyebrow. “He left _me_ at the Spring Formal to go rescue Lana—“

“Wasn’t there a _tornado_ that evening?” Alice pointed out sharply.

“Fine,” Chloe huffed, “to go rescue Lana from a _tornado_. And he’s left Lana behind tons of times, like when Lex gave them tickets to a Radiohead concert and a freaking _limo_ , and he’s only been in love with _her_ since he was like five.“ Alice raised the other dark eyebrow, and Chloe at least had the grace to look a little embarrassed. Right, pretty tasteless to talk about old girlfriends to the _new_ girlfriend. “Anyway,” she continued, “ _I_ just went home. Lana just went home. Or out with someone else.”

Alice was feeling a little ticked by this point. Okay, so she’d only been in town a few months, she didn’t know all the history among her new friends, and she didn’t want to judge them too harshly. But she could definitely understand why Clark got so frustrated with them sometimes. _Don’t be a b---h, don’t be a b---h_ , she told herself, taking a deep breath and closing her books up. _Don’t make Clark’s friends—your friends—hate you._

“Chloe,” Alice began carefully, and she thought of a number of ways she could phrase this that would instantly break her earlier dictum, “maybe what Clark was looking for… was someone who _would_ stay.” As in, you left, Lana left, I stayed, and who is he actually _with_?

Chloe narrowed her eyes at the dark-haired girl, studying her. Funny, she didn’t _look_ crazy. But no _rational_ girl would put up with Clark’s mysteries and lame excuses for long. “It sets a bad precedent,” she finally decided.

Alice rolled her eyes and stood, gathering her books. Break time was over. Thank goodness. Back to serving coffee to the undeserving customers of the Talon and doing algebra equations in her head. “You’ll get tired of it!” Chloe called after her as she headed towards the back room. “Maybe you stayed once, but you’ll get tired of it!” Chloe turned back to her cooling cappuccino when it became apparent that Alice was ignoring her. So the new girl had a little more patience with Clark than she or Lana did. But that would quickly change. Chloe was confident of it.

 

Lex was sitting behind his desk staring at his laptop when Clark wandered through the office door. “Hey, Lex,” he greeted, trying to sound more casual than he felt. Now that he was here, he _was_ actually going to do it. He _had_ to.

“Hey, Clark,” Lex answered, flashing him only a brief warm-ish look before gazing sternly back at the screen, as if hoping that willpower alone could turn whatever report he was reading into _good_ news.

“Um, so Lex, there was something I wanted to ask you,” Clark began awkwardly. Lex would understand, he told himself. He would be amused, and mock him, but really, he would understand.

“I hope to G-d it’s something interesting,” Lex sighed, finally looking up at Clark, “because this economic forecast is sucking the soul out of me.”

“Well, the thing is,” Clark said, hands stuffed in his pockets, “I was just wondering…” He trailed off, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish.

Lex raised an eyebrow. He saw that look on his friend’s face, the one that said he now thought his original question was really stupid so he was scrambling to find another, innocuous one. “Come on, Clark,” he encouraged, “just spit it out.”

Clark took a deep breath. He could do this. “Lex… Do you have any sapphires?”


End file.
